Mirca Madianou

Professor in the Department of Media and Communications

Goldsmiths, University of London

Mirca Madianou's research examines the social uses and consequences of communication technologies in a transnational and comparative context. My work makes theoretical and substantive contributions to the areas of migration, disaster recovery, humanitarianism and their intersection with digital technology. She has directed two ESRC grants: Humanitarian Technologies and Migration, ICTS and transnational families which have led to several publications on the social consequences of new communication technologies among marginalised and migrant populations. Her approach is ethnographic and comparative, focusing on the asymmetrical and gendered relationships between countries in the so-called global South (such as the Philippines) and the UK from the point of view of the individuals concerned. More broadly, this ethnographic research serves as the basis for more theoretical writings on media technologies, communication and social change. She is the author of Mediating the Nation: News, Audiences and the Politics of Identity (2005) and Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia (2012 with D. Miller) as well as editor of Ethics of Media (2013 with N. Couldry and A. Pinchevski). From May 2017 she will be Chair of the Philosophy, Theory and Critique division of the International Communication Association (ICA).

Madianou joined the Department of Media and Communications in September 2013. Between 2004-2011 she taught at the University of Cambridge where she was Newton Trust Lecturer in Sociology and Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College. Between 2011-2013 she was Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester. She has held Research Fellowships at UCL (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, 2002-4) and at the Centre for Research in Arts Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge (2006). Her research has been funded by the ESRC, ESF, the Mellon Foundation and CRASSH, Cambridge.